DGM Newsletter - April 11th - Look what's new at the market!

Greetings!

We'd like to thank everyone for a wonderful opening day. It was great to see familiar faces and introduce ourselves to new ones. We hope you enjoyed the DGM market pizza, made by one of our new vendors, L&M Pizza, with fresh ingredients right from our market!

We also wanted to take a moment to talk about milk. Rather than reply to emails or comment on various rumors, we feel we need to address this here in our newsletter. As you may know, Carlton Dairy is no longer participating at the DGM. We are sad to see Chad go, however, it was the decision of Carlton Dairy to leave the market rather than participate under our standards. We have set rules and standards for all of our vendors to uphold, including regulations of Certified Naturally Grown status or a 1 year grace period for each of our produce vendors, and proper licensing for our processed food. We inspect our vendors and farms to ensure that they are following these rules, because we care about providing healthy food and produce, and knowing where every tomato, jar of honey, and slice of cheese come from. We do this for you, our customers, so that you know when you come to the DGM, that you are buying products and produce that you can trust.

That said, we know that many of you shop at DGM as a convenient way to get your weekly shopping done, in a one stop shop. We are committed to providing you with the easiest, healthiest, and best solutions possible. This week, our featured vendors will be Calyroad Creamery and Johnston Family Farm, have solutions to your dairy needs! And don't forget that Annie Okra's Barn, Garmon Family Farms, and our new honey vendor, Hidden Springs Farm, also have eggs.

Here's just a peek at what some of your vendors have lined up for this week:

Featured Vendor - Calyroad Creamery

What makes a cheese-maker different from all the other folks making cheese out there?

That's the question we asked the two sisters and artisan cheese-makers, Robin and Cathy, of CalyRoad Creamery. We got a very interesting response and we'd like to share it with our wonderful DGM customers.

"We had always wanted to work together and be involved with some type of sustainable yet creative endeavor that tied back to the land and animals, says Robin, co-founder of CalyRoad. We had searched and thrown around so many ideas of how to work together and achieve that goal but just what or how was a long time coming." An idea which involved Cathy's goat, Casey, came to Robin one night and she called her sister. The question " Can you milk that goat?" went from an idea to a real life goal. "It seemed a natural fit for us to make cheese." says Cathy, who owns Casey, the spark for the women's inspiration to learn about cheese-making. Casey had been an award winning goat in dairy shows who had developed mastitis and wasn't useful anymore to her breeder. Cathy, who has always had a tender spot for discarded animals, jumped at the chance to offer a home to these three lively goats. They reside at Cathy's 13 acre farm in Villa Rica and have the run of the pasture along with 5 horses, one dog and 5 cats.

Those three lively goats sent them off on a quest to learn about cheese-making. After participating in a short internship at Ripshin Farms in North Carolina, the sisters were hooked. Their next stop was the Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese. What they found was enthralling! "Milk is magical, says Robin. What one ingredient do you know of, with very little added to it, can produce so many varieties of cheeses?" The women became passionate about the science behind making cheese after attending VIAC. They began in earnest to make goat's milk cheeses in May of 2009.

Unfortunately, the goat dairy they had partnered with could not produce enough goats' milk to carry their small business throughout the market season. What was a huge disappointment became a blessing as well as another opportunity to make cheese.
The search was on for different types of milk. The creamery found Russell Johnston, a dairyman that believes in high quality milk and treating his animals as naturally as possible. Robin and Cathy began experimenting with the milk from Johnston Family Farms and called in one more force to help broaden their knowledge. That force was Neville McNaughton, a consultant and expert cheese-maker in his own right. CalyRoad studied under his tutelage, most often over long distance conversations. What had started out as a small dairy concentrating simply on goat's milk has become a collaboration of two cheese-makers who have the ability to make cheese from entirely different milks. CalyRoad brings a level of knowledge to the table that translates into many different types of handcrafted cheeses. And that is what makes them different from other cheese-makers....a desire to explore and make some of the finest handcrafted cheeses in Georgia by using the best milk they can find.

Featured Vendor - Johnston Family Farm

Johnston Family Farmis a family owned and operated dairy in Newborn, GA. We work to provide a premium wholesome milk to our consumers.

What makes Johnston Family Farm different is that we produce and bottle our milk completely on our farm, so you get the freshest product possible.

You may notice that our family farm cows are always happy. It may be because they're always well taken care of or it may be that they have acres of lush green pastures to graze over. With this stress free life style our cows produce an abundance of milk naturally.

Johnston Family Farm works hard to bring the best milk possible to your family's table. We invite you to follow us on twitter at
twitter.com/JohnstonFarm We love sharing our experiences here on the farm with all of our friends. We think you will be suprised at the things we do here on the farm. You can learn more about Johnston Family Farm by clicking here.